And for the record, Streambaby does work on Solaris 10 Sparc. I consider this to be a Java reference system.

The default for my system is Java 1.5 although I could set the environment variables for 1.6 I suppose. But my main server system is a Mac Leopard Server (an ancient Powermac dual-450 Mhz). The Solaris machine is an Ultra 60 dual 450 Mhz (also old as Methusela). For some reason, I can't get Streambaby to work on the Mac under Galleon (tivostream did). I need to fiddle with it some more. I haven't tried Streambaby on the Mac in a standalone manner.

BTW, the reason some of us need Java 1.5 compatibility is that Apple only made Java 1.6 available for 64-bit Intel Macs. So anyone with 32-bit Intel or any PowerPC machines are stuck with 1.5.

Yoav-- I'm not sure, but this very well may have been the issue with why your builds work with the native libraries and mine did not. I was looking at the custom-build.xml for ffmpeg-java, and I don't think ffmpeg-java ever got built for 1.5. It's possible that previous versions of streambaby where "catching" this exception and just not loading the native libraries. (Not 100% sure about this, but it's a better theory than I had before). If this is the case, I truly apologize for all of the debugging you've done over the last couple of days.

Yoav-- I'm not sure, but this very well may have been the issue with why your builds work with the native libraries and mine did not. I was looking at the custom-build.xml for ffmpeg-java, and I don't think ffmpeg-java ever got built for 1.5. It's possible that previous versions of streambaby where "catching" this exception and just not loading the native libraries. (Not 100% sure about this, but it's a better theory than I had before). If this is the case, I truly apologize for all of the debugging you've done over the last couple of days.

Anyways, I just built pyTivoX using your pre-built streambaby distribution, and it loads the dynamic libs. I'll upload the the beta in a bit... just gonna make sure it streams fine first

edit : Ok the new pyTivoX is up. Hopefully everything is working smoothly.

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Some quick questions:
I notice the transcode command specifies 2-channel for ffmpeg. Wouldn't 6-channel make more sense? (what happens to a movie that is 2-channel if it's transcoded into 6?).

The default jpeg compression for the images is 10%. At least on my tivo the ff images look barely discernible -- very blocky. What is the argument against raising it to say 30%? 50%? (is it cpu on host computer, or bandwidth to tivo that's the problem?).

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I think that's a problem on your end (I just looked at mine again and it's definitely loading). Keep in mind that even if it fails to load the native libraries things will run fine.

Do you have libavutil.XX.so in /usr/lib? or /usr/local/lib or somewhere in your LD_LIBRARY_PATH? You say 'unix' but not which exact OS, so it's hard to be more specific... but it's looking for the four shared libs:
libavutil, libavformat, libavcodec, and libswscale
That error is printed if it can't find them or can't load them, do you know where they are on your system?

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That's probably specific to Solaris-- It means it could not loaded the ffmpeg native libraries, and will spawn ffmpeg as a process instead. (You lose certain functionality in this case)

The error message never used to be shown (it was supposed to, but wasn't).

Do you know if you have libavcodec, libavformat, and libavutil (the shared library portion of ffmpeg) installed on your machine? If so it is supposed to load them, but I really don't know enough about Solaris to guide you much more... (or to even know if getting to them to load is going to be possible)

That's probably specific to Solaris-- It means it could not loaded the ffmpeg native libraries, and will spawn ffmpeg as a process instead. (You lose certain functionality in this case)

The error message never used to be shown (it was supposed to, but wasn't).

Do you know if you have libavcodec, libavformat, and libavutil (the shared library portion of ffmpeg) installed on your machine? If so it is supposed to load them, but I really don't know enough about Solaris to guide you much more... (or to even know if getting to them to load is going to be possible)

I don't have those libraries installed elsewhere. I remember it being mentioned on Linux so that should have been a red flag. Curiously, this error didn't appear on .18 which is what made me take notice.

I would think that streambaby would load them in Solaris if it could find the files in an available path. Question..if I run this on a Mac, where is it expecting to find these libraries?

I would think that streambaby would load them in Solaris if it could find the files in an available path. Question..if I run this on a Mac, where is it expecting to find these libraries?

It would only find it if the path was in the global shared library search path, or if you specifically told it where to find them.

As for the mac: it isn't expecting to find them anywhere. Macs don't ship with ffmpeg. You have to get ffmpeg using one of several ways: If you used darwinports/macports I believe it puts shared libs in /opt/local/lib. If you used fink it puts them in /sw/lib. IF you built it yourself it puts it in /usr/local/lib. If you're using pyTivoX, it's in /Applications/pyTivoX.app/Contents/Resources/ .

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ok, I figured out why AVI files recorded from a digital camera were not working.

1) 8 bit pcm audio seems to be a common audio format for digital camera videos. Unfortunately 8 bit resampling is broken in ffmpeg right now, so conversion to ac3 fails. Changing the ffmpeg option to turn off audio with -an allows those videos to play.

2) Some were recorded at 15fps mjpeg, which ffmpeg says is invalid for conversion mpeg2. Changing the ffmpeg options to force 25fps or other valid rate makes them playable.

Some quick questions:
I notice the transcode command specifies 2-channel for ffmpeg. Wouldn't 6-channel make more sense? (what happens to a movie that is 2-channel if it's transcoded into 6?).

The default jpeg compression for the images is 10%. At least on my tivo the ff images look barely discernible -- very blocky. What is the argument against raising it to say 30%? 50%? (is it cpu on host computer, or bandwidth to tivo that's the problem?).

The answer to both of those questions is I don't know :-) I've definitely played with higher quality jpegs (20-30%) and didn't have any issues. It will make the cache files larger. I really was just trying to play it safe, and was mostly concerned about stressing the tivo. I'll probably leave the current default as it is for a while, but I'll change my personal INI to start using higher quality, and if others do the same and have no problems, I'll try to up it in the future.

As for the transcode, again, I was just playing it safe (and my rear speakers haven't been hooked up in a couple of years, so it made no difference to me) Again, I'll change my personal INI and play around and see what happens with various files.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bzo

ok, I figured out why AVI files recorded from a digital camera were not working.

1) 8 bit pcm audio seems to be a common audio format for digital camera videos. Unfortunately 8 bit resampling is broken in ffmpeg right now, so conversion to ac3 fails. Changing the ffmpeg option to turn off audio with -an allows those videos to play.

2) Some were recorded at 15fps mjpeg, which ffmpeg says is invalid for conversion mpeg2. Changing the ffmpeg options to force 25fps or other valid rate makes them playable.

I forgot about the frame rate issue. I'll try to take care of that in the next version. Unless it becomes a huge isssue, probably won't do anything about the 8-bit pcm issue. I assume it will get fixed in ffmpeg at some point and it will start working again.

Still can't get this to run on my desktop, yet was able to get it going on my laptop. When I run the application the window opens and closes quickly yet never scans video directory with ffmpeg as it did on my laptop. I checked my firewall and made sure the port was open(TCP Outgoing). In my task manager it shows StreamBaby is running. I have Java 1.6 on both computers. I am running Galleon and Pytivo on my desktop though and not on my laptop. Any ideas.

BTW The new update seems to have fixed my original problems. Awesome. Now to get it running through Galleon.

But if you want to try it anyways, you will need to add .tivo to the list of valid file extensions in streambaby.ini (From the wiki):

Code:

extensions= (default:mp4,mpeg,vob,mpg,mpeg2,mp2,avi,wmv,asf)

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I noticed that my Game 5 World Series video doesnt show up. It is a .tivo file in HD and is 12GB

It is possible to stream .tivo files natively as discovered by davidblackledge:http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb...d.php?t=416647
So Keary could add support for it (currently it's not there but I was able to add it easily to tivostream and could be easily added to streambaby).
However, the preview and random access to anywhere in the file are probably not possible to implement so you are better off decrypting to .mpg to get full functionality anyway.

Please forgive me if this has already been addressed or if it's a stupid question. I have searched the forum and don't see anyone else mention this...

I just now downloaded and fired up streambaby, simply adding a directory location to the ini file -- no other changes. It seems to work great, except I'm not getting AC3 audio. Same content with pyTivo delivers AC3, but with streambaby, the audio is non-AC3.

Please forgive me if this has already been addressed or if it's a stupid question. I have searched the forum and don't see anyone else mention this...

I just now downloaded and fired up streambaby, simply adding a directory location to the ini file -- no other changes. It seems to work great, except I'm not getting AC3 audio. Same content with pyTivo delivers AC3, but with streambaby, the audio is non-AC3.

Anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

streambaby will stream your original data only if it decides that it's a fully valid stream that tivo will play (not sure what the details are). Otherwise, it launches ffmpeg and converts it to an mpeg-2 stream. Right now the default conversion uses a 2-channel encoding. The author is looking into changing it to a 6-channel encoding default as we speak .

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As documented you can alter the ffmpeg transcoding settings by adding ffmpegexe.transcode setting to streambaby.ini. Default setting is (as pointed out already):
ffmpegexe.transcode= -acodec ac3 -ac 2 -ab 192k -vcodec mpeg2video -f vob -sameq -async 1 -v 0
You can experiment to determine what settings you prefer. For example you can change it to -ac 6 to get 6 channel audio. I sometimes have to use the setting to add -aspect 16:9 for some of my wmv videos to get proper aspect ratio.

hmm.. So I decided to try with the only mp4 file with an ac3 5.1 track I had, and indeed, my tivo is also playing it in stereo. Even if I try changing the ffmpeg to use 6-channel at 480kbps.

Guess a little more looking into it is called for.. time for logfiles again

Edit: Oops. I was using an mp4 file with 5.1 aac audio, not 5.1 ac-3. But the same problem exists...

Update: This is related to the MP4Streaming module. If I transcode with ffmpeg, I'm getting 6-channel correctly, but for some reason the mp4 module is streaming 2-channel audio instead of 6 channel (and yes, the file has an ac-3 6 channel audio stream).

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I forgot about the frame rate issue. I'll try to take care of that in the next version. Unless it becomes a huge isssue, probably won't do anything about the 8-bit pcm issue. I assume it will get fixed in ffmpeg at some point and it will start working again.

great, I'm sure adjusting the frame rate will address a lot of stream compatibility issues. Would it be much trouble to detect the presence of 8 bit audio and simply turn it off in that case? Video with no audio sure beats a can't stream error msg

I don't know what triggers it, but I have noticed several times that streambaby pegs all cpus at 100% and doesn't ramp down even after a couple of hours.

Lastly, I had the crash again. Happened after scrolling quickly through many pages through the screen, and selecting a wmv file to play:

Looks like simply defaulting the command to use -ac 6 is a no go. If the input channels are more than 2 but not exactly 6 (like an older fim that uses 4-channel dolby), then ffmpeg will freak out and exit with an error: "Resampling with input channels greater than 2 unsupported."

fix: duh kind of obvious. Don't specify number of channels at all. Then it will use whatever the original source has. (i.e. drop the -ac 2, don't add -ac 6). So far working right....

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* Attempts to work around the 1.1G limit for streaming videos on the TiVo. If you reach the 1.1G limit, the video you are watching will be paused and restarted with a fresh buffer at the position you were in before.

Hmm. No offense, and I am sure your application is otherwise quite a fine one, but I really don't want to have a program pause upwards of 18 times while watching it. The smallest programs I have are over 5 Gigs, and many are over 30 Gigs.

Hmm. No offense, and I am sure your application is otherwise quite a fine one, but I really don't want to have a program pause upwards of 18 times while watching it. The smallest programs I have are over 5 Gigs, and many are over 30 Gigs.

Wow, if that wasn't meant to be offensive, I don't know what is.

Dude, you don't like it. Don't use it. The pause-rebuffer thing is a workaround for the fact that the current tivo software will not allow a streaming buffer bigger than 1.1G. This is a workaround for larger files.
If you absolutely can't stand it, you can do one of three things:

1) Convince the tivo coders to increase the buffer in an upcoming release.
2) Use a non-streaming application like pytivo.
3) Make sure your movies are smaller when you encode.

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Hmm. No offense, and I am sure your application is otherwise quite a fine one, but I really don't want to have a program pause upwards of 18 times while watching it. The smallest programs I have are over 5 Gigs, and many are over 30 Gigs.

Then streaming is not for you (at least while this 1.1GB limitation exists). This is a step up compared to other HME streamers that simply can't play beyond the 1st buffer full point.
Short of help from Tivo at this point it's going to be hard to discover how to overcome this 1.1GB buffer limitation. Fairly sure there is a way since Netflix/Tivo is able to overcome it (perhaps by turning off buffering on Tivo completely).

...(note the -ac 6 setting) and now I think I'm getting the kind of audio I want.

Drop the -ac 6 from that, or you will find some movies won't work (any movie that has more than 2 but not exactly 6 channels will break.. since I assume your system can easily play 4 channel, or 7.1 channel inputs, there's no reason to try and force everything to 6-channel). Without -ac 6, ffmpeg will just default to keeping whatever were the number of channels in your original movie

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